Yeketerinberg, May 16 : In the first standalone Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) meeting which concluded on Friday at the little known industrial Russian town of yeketerinburg, both the emerging economies, India and Brazil rubbished the blame on world food crises and have traded their guns on the developed world for the shortage.

Coming down heavily on the United States, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said, "The root cause of the food crisis is the food subsidies given by developed countries."

Meanwhile Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee took a more cautious stand said, "Food crisis is a very large issue its cause could not be defined in a short answer." Mukherjee also cited example of cyclone in Mynamar and Floods in Bangladesh for shortage of rice, which is part of a staple diet in mainland India.

The new entrant in the India-Russia-China troika, Brazil, which has transformed the group into quadrilateral has also initiated to organise the meeting of Finance Ministers of the BRIC countries to discuss global economic and financial issues.

In a joint communiqu
‚ issued after the meeting the ministers noted a close interconnection between energy security, socio economic development and environmental protection.

The BRIC nations also reaffirmed their commitment to the multilateral efforts aimed at reaching an optimum balance of interests between producers, transit states and consumers of energy resources.

Observers feel that BRIC nations forms a very crucial geopolitical symmetry in which two countries Russia and Brazil are the major producers of energy and nergy starved India and China being the largest producers.

The BRIC nations constitute nearly half of the world's population and more than 26 per cent of the world economy.

Addition of Brazil into the India-Russia-China troika has certainly added more seriousness, credentials and power to the club, which seems to be directly challenging the dominance of NATO and US in the international spectrum. By Naveen Kapoor